


As Solemn as a Mourner

by PudentillaMcMoany



Series: Starecross School of Magic [2]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Faerie stories, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 13:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8715013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PudentillaMcMoany/pseuds/PudentillaMcMoany
Summary: A retelling of "Mr Segundus makes a pledge". To be read after that!





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rubyofkukundu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyofkukundu/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Mr Segundus Makes a Pledge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8706067) by [rubyofkukundu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyofkukundu/pseuds/rubyofkukundu). 



Winter comes to England like a dream. It seeps in the crevices among the trees from which the moon glints coldly above the forest, whispers with the biting wind from the continent, frost-heavy heads of flowers bowing in its wake. It’s in the uneasy scampering of small forest creatures, in the smell of burnt wood it carries from the village, like a warm home or a carnage ground.

There is a bog at the limits of the forest. The villagers cut peat from it in a shared ritual toil, of digging and digging to keep their homes warm, and isn’t that right, isn’t that right that a long time ago their ancestors slaughtered men and threw them in the very same bog for the very same purpose of keeping their families safe from the winter and its all-powerful gods? And isn’t it beautiful that sometimes, as they carve into the peat with their blade-sharp spades, the villagers will unknowingly cut into one of those bodies, preserved into relics by the nature of the ground- by England that is; and isn’t it beautiful how they warm their hearths with those relics, how sacred- although he grieves for them, the dead and the living who will soon be dead anyway, and how could he not, for they’re all of them his children in a way, although some more than others.

In the hall made ready for the vigil he grieves for the boy too, spread on the table like a meal of sorts, restful and saint-still among the flowers that some mother or sister has arranged. Even so, the gentle comfort of rosebud and dogwood cannot conceal a sharp clean scent of the lemons they washed the room with, and it’s this cleanliness that is striking, most of all, this prim orderly smell that surrounds and exalts, like a pungent sort of frame, the scent of death hanging somewhat limply in the air; which in turn awakes in him a memory. And isn’t it astounding how an old mind works, the world stretched on and on by the years, made infinitely small by the cluttered quickness of remembrance?

The memory is this:

 _Once upon a time he hid with the dogs under the big table of the big hall, oh it was before before he left his father and his mother and his brothers before he was a king, when there was another king; and this king had received an embassy from a southern king (kings being somewhat abundant in those days). He remembers the black-eyed tan-skinned ambassadors who had brought lemons from their southern land, and how the lemons had sat on the big table of the big hall all day, golden like jewels in a nest of glossy green leaves, smelling of sunshine even in the bleakness of winter, and all the time, all the time he had felt under that smell the more subtle scent of death, a snake ready to spring upon him from the emerald nest of leaves, and he had known where it had come from, how it had slithered from mouth to mouth in half-murmured tales about the southern falconer king, whom some people called the antichrist and some other_ stupor mundi _, in Latin tinged with tongues of Normans, and of Arabs; and this king, they said, he stole infants from their mothers to have them grow feral, secluded from people to see what language it was that they would speak, for it would be the aboriginal language of man; and they said that he once had sent prisoners out to hunt and then had them killed, stripped of their clothes, of their skins; disembowelled for a flight of fancy, for the preterhuman ungodly curiosity of seeing what it was that they had inside them, what they were made of. And he had imagined this southern wonderful king with talons like a falcon, and for the first time he had felt a violent fearful pride tearing at him as he looked at the bird flying on the king’s blazon; and he had felt, for the first time, the awe and the love for the big birds of prey._

 

He walks towards the boy all dressed in black, as solemn as a mourner, and with the gentle fresh hands of a doctor he uncloses his mouth, and he would, if he could, blow into him the breath of life, for he is a sentimental and capricious man and the boy is beautiful, but there is nothing to be done now, and what a waste it would be otherwise of a beautiful boy, of a swift mind and a bold laugh- what a pity not to use a body that would serve him well; and isn’t there a sacredness in this as well, as there is in the peat cutters warming themselves to the bones of their elders, as there is in England when it sucks the marrow out of corpses in wintertime only to grow ripe with them in Spring. It’s not his fault that people die, and there is beauty in it as well, elegance in the economy of the process. He whispers secret words, he rubs a thumb on the boy’s heart; he enters the time of men, the other men that is, the blessed forgetfulness of the past, the oblivion to all that is future.

 

The school is a beehive of sorts, all yellow and warm with servants buzzing busily around, with students gently enveloped in the honey-sweet thrumming of their daily rhythms; there’s a convent-like sacredness in their washing together and praying together, in their studying together and eating together, and walking, and talking, and above all the magic. The students of Starecross are bright and brave, eager to learn, and open in their friendship. This friendliness is, make no mistakes, an outcome of privilege. It stems from a softness of heart rather than a real goodness- from a bone-deep conviction that no one is going to hurt them stemming from the casual event that no one has ever hurt them before. It is however a forgivable weakness- and the boys are kind to him, to Richard that is, and he feels, in the part of his heart that is still a boy’s heart, a friendship budding in himself and in them, within it the sort of undying loyalty that arises from living among boys, which is to say among soldiers; and he rejoices in this, but feels that something, the gentleness of it, is wrong, out of place. Shouldn’t boys like these be fighting side to side, he wonders, and die together in battle against a terrible foe? Nevermind if the foe in their story is him, weaving ambush after ambush for them to face; aren’t they wasted like this, pampered as they are, growing languid with an existence of soft pillows and soft-spokenness, of soft rebukes when they do something as innocuously mischievous as destroying some curtains? Even this boyish prank he has had to instigate, the boys being too well-mannered for it, but how they enjoyed it, the prank and the repairing it afterwards, how they basked in their cleverness! How brimming with pride was Wenbury St Clair after his scouring spell, how more of a man, in proving, albeit unaware of it, the valour of his school. And how even flaxen-haired, soft spoken Gregory Wallace, who loves fine clothes and good food, had acquired a measure of daring as he jumped to the aid of Richard (of himself that is) immediately, and without even thinking of it, as natural as breathing, cast the Peterborough spell with a still voice and still hands on the mare’s flank, to reassure her and his friend Richard. That very same night, when he is coaxed into bed by the gentle hushed voices of his worried roommates, he comes to a thought, which leads to a decision. That these brave boys, who are martially loyal to each other, deserve a grander battle, a mortal foe to prove themselves against; that they might even defy it. That John Segundus, their mild-mannered general, deserves one most of all.

The master of Starecross, the small unmoveable centre around which the rhythms of the school revolve, is a strange creature. The King is not, on principle, interested in anything- which is to say that he’s interested in _everything_ , which in the end is remarkably like being interested in nothing. But John Segundus, even with these caveats, interests him. How good he is, how meek; he is a darling gentle man, resolute to live in self-imposed obscurity, and yet. From the tense hunch of his shoulders and the clenching of his hands, from the still, straight line of his mouth transpires another character which he keeps hidden, which he might, even, not know of. John Segundus doesn’t give the impression of being a particularly passionate man, and yet, and yet.

One day he is expounding a spell, one of Doncaster’s for banishing the frost off strawberries, which, as is the case with most spells, didn’t work five years ago and works now. Taken with the pleasure of teaching, and with the subtler rush of magic, Segundus raises his voice in elation. He is unable to stay still, jumps to the blackboard to mark out a diagram, answers a question with his long white fingers fluttering about in the pretty way in which they do, and for a small while he looks like a bigger wilder man, not a schoolmaster but a magician. As soon as he takes account of this, however- account of himself that is, he immediately changes. Checking himself with a painful little grimace he makes his back straighter, coaxes his voice into the gentle hushed tone of a teacher and a respectable man, and the students adjust to this sudden change of air and stop asking questions, go back to their textbooks a little bit sheepishly, but it’s too late for John Segundus, who looks flustered and sad, and it looks like violence, this imposing of quiet, like an injustice, and how to stand it? John Segundus, with all his modesty, might even be worthy, of all the masters of all the schools in England, of the King; of his protection and his approval and his patronage, even. But how to prove this, unless with a feat worthy of this darkling small man, of this small brave school?

 

“I swear I did!”

“You did not!”

“She gave me a lock of her hair; look!”

“Wallace, you sly fellow!”

“How was it then.”

“It was all- it was good. It was. She was very soft I suppose, and very…”

“ _Soft_?”

“Of all the adjectives!”

“Now, gentlemen! One cannot enter a room without finding Parker discussing grammar!”

“Smith, my dear fellow! Come sit on the bed, and make haste! Wallace was just telling us about women.”

“Oh, I would not want to intrude.”

“Do not be ridiculous, it is your room too. Here, have a tot of claret.”

“Where does this come from?”

“Nevermind that! Drink and please tell us. Have you ever seen a naked woman?”

“Are you forward, St Clair!”

“Have you?”

“You first.”

“Dear me, I will need another sip before answering that!”

“He has not! None of us have.”

“Except for Wallace, in Bath.”

“Well.”

“Smith?”

“I- I, to be. I did.”

“Smith!”

“Close your mouth, Wallace, you look like a fish.”

“It is just who would have guessed! I beg your pardon Smith, it is not that you are not dashing, but-”

“You are the most proper fellow in this room, is what Wallace means.”

“Now _that_ is an adjective, Parker.”

“Confound you, St Clair!”

“Well? How was it?”

 “Was it _sof_ t?”

“Very funny, St Clair!”

“I am sorry, Wallace!”

“Who was the lucky girl?”

“Was it in _Bath_?”

“Stop teasing me!”

“No, it was… I cannot possibly tell.”

“Are you quite alright, Smith?”

“Have a sip of claret!”

“I swear, St Clair!”

“What? Look at how white he has turned! It will fortify him!”

“Did the kiss go awry then?”

“Is the girl dead?”

“St Clair! Is that a question to ask?”

“I am sorry! It is the claret speaking.”

“Forgive him, Smith, he is a spirited lad.”

“…Oh, oh, _spirited_.”

“Be silent! Smith?”

“It is alright. No. No, she is not dead. I suppose she is… Oh, but I cannot possibly!”

“It is perfectly fine not to tell us.”

“Do not listen to Parker, you _have_ to tell us!”

“St Clair!”

“Do not pretend you are not curious, Wallace!”

“Not at the expense of our friend’s good cheer!”

“You make me sound like an utter monster!”

“It is because you are!”

“Shut up! Smith is _stirring_. Smith, will you tell us?”

“I suppose- do you promise not to tell anyone ever?”

“We do!”

“We do.”

“Although you should not tell us if you would rather keep it secret.”

“No. No it is alright. You are my friends, and I have never told a soul. It is high time that I did.”

“When did it happen?”

“It was two years ago. I had been sick in bed for weeks, bored out of my mind, and when I started to get better my father, God have mercy upon him, allowed me access to our library in the mornings.”

“It was a maid then!”

“Be quiet, St Clair! Do go on, Smith.”

“It was not a maid. Would I look like this had it been a maid? No; remember, I was younger and bored, and had free access to thousands of volumes. Of course, we had very few books of magic; but I had already commenced my education as a magician, and had obtained encouraging results with what few spells I had endeavoured. I suppose I had grown proud; I suppose I was terribly bored, which is by itself a powerful motivation. And as you certainly know, every book on England is a book of magic if you know how to read.”

“And you know how to read.”

“I would not insinuate- I am hardly that good a magician. But on that occasion, I knew. Would that I never endeavoured it!”

“What was it.”

“Human girls are notorious for not liking to be naked.”

“Do I know it!”

“On the other hand, faeries quite like it.”

 

When the time has come and the net of a plot has been cast upon Starecross, the king retires. He falls ill, which means that Richard falls ill; which means that he partly decides that Richard should fall ill, and partly abides to the natural fact that a dead body, even when revived by magic, remains all in all a dead body, and always ends up pulling in many uncomfortable ways at the soul inhabiting it, and is prone to sickness.

So he retires to a sickroom, to a musty bed where he spends his days sleeping a restless sleep, restless because deep in his heart (in Richard’s heart, that is) he is worried sick for his companions, his friends, the fate of the school he has come to love; and even though the king is curious, and slightly impatient, he has dimmed down his magic lest the faerie who now lives in the school should feel him, and Richard’s conscience is strong even as his body is ill, tugging uncomfortably at the hems of his mind with a young energy, with a jittery sort of anguish.

In his sickbed he is often alone, the school been busy at first with the activities of a school, later with those of a hospital. Even so he has, however, a comfort; a nurse whom Mr Honeyfoot, who dotes on him, has sent to care for him (which means to care for Richard of course; Mr Honeyfoot, for all that he fervently believes in magic, is slightly more uncertain about how he should believe in its king).

He does not see the nurse, not really; he’s a king hidden in a boy’s body, and the boy’s body is ill, and it sleeps most of the time. Even so, he sees her in a way: likes the softness of her slippers on the wooden planks of the floor, and the strength of her small hands as she lifts him to give him a tincture, and the delicateness of the same hands, pleasantly cold and slightly rough with calluses, when she washes him in the mornings.

Lizzie Elmington is matter-of-fact but not brusque, smart but not sly, with a gentle Yorkshire lilt in her voice that lulls him to sleep as she tells him stories upon stories of faeries; and Lizzie’s stories are all wrong of course, she fumbles with the events, _he was there_ , but the way in which she spins them is right nonetheless, with her small rough-and-delicate hands projecting ominous shadows on the walls, with her voice acquiring tremolo notes when she tells of the children abandoned in forests- of how we should pity them, for they parents have forsaken them, but also, in a way, should we not be jealous, just a little, of their leaving the time of people; of their entering the time of stories, which is after all the only real, the only possible time?

And so it is that he dotes on Lizzie Elmington, becomes half in love with this maid who is youngish and blondish and prettyish, not at all like his usual human companions; and he decides to give her a gift.

The gift is this:

 

_Once upon a time, when the village of Starecross was nothing more than a short unpaved road, going from the church down south to the school of magic up north, with only a small scattering of houses all around it; when it only offered to a weary traveller the somewhat dismal attractions of a farm down a wheat field and an ale-house called The Flask, there lived in the village a young woman by the name of Lizzie Elmington, who was a nurse._

_She had not wanted to become a nurse, which isn’t to say that she had opposed it, but that, like many things that happen in life, she had found herself to be one almost casually, after tending to her dying aunt so well, with such obvious talent, that other relatives had asked her to tend to their relatives, and their relatives, after having been restored to health, had asked her to nurse upon their friends. By the power of her good reputation, which was for most part deserved, in the short span of a year she had been christened a nurse, had made for herself a steady income, and bought a new sturdy table for her mother’s kitchen, hot chocolate and warm cream buns for her sisters and brothers on a Sunday morning, and, as these things go, in time so many people had called her a nurse, and good nurse, that she had become one; lost a certain childish roundness from her cheeks, lost a certain childhood wistfulness from her heart, and gained instead a sturdy frame and a steady heart, and the mundane sort of courage that comes from tending the sick, curing death away from them or, when this is impossible, making it pleasant when they have suffered all too much._

_And so Lizzie Elmington’s fame spread. Soon she had almost no time to sit with her sisters and brothers at the new kitchen table to tell them stories, for she was too busy with sick people, which as is known will abound even in a small village such as Starecross- and moreover, she was often called to the nearby villages, and once to the city of York. Like this the years went on, and as her brothers and sisters grew up and grew proficient in the art of story-telling on their own, Lizzie, who still had in herself many stories, took to telling them to her patients, for it is a known fact that a good nurse must be most of all a good storyteller, and that stories help as much as medicine both the sick who are bored and the dying who are scared, and they make pain bearable and they make life seem longer. And the years went on, until on the day of her twenty-seventh birthday, an otherwise unremarkable one, Lizzie was called to the school of magic to tend to a boy who was wasting away._

_She packed up her bag and asked for John Barrett, the landlord of The Flask, to give her passage in his carriage, for the road was long and her equipment was heavy- for she felt, but this she did not tell him, a chilling of the bone when she thought of the school, as if an unknown menace was hovering above it._

(Lizzie Elmington was in the right: an unknow menace was indeed hovering above Starecross, and killing the students one by one as if with long shadowy fingers, and haunting the small lovely headmaster, who should fight it; but this is not Lizzie Elmington’s story, and it is best told another day, when the rain is heavy outside, to scare the children.)

 

_For her part, Lizzie Elmington did not fight any terrible foe. She however took part in a battle of her own against sickness, and then against death- a battle not less noble even though it required no weapons and no magic; even though it was made mostly of tinctures to prepare, and dirty linen to wash, and stories to tell. It was all in all a boring battle, we must say, but are not all battles boring, made as they are of long waits for the enemies, long marches in the sun, long hours spent idly or in mundane activities such as building tents and settling camps? It is only that in the stories we tell we leave those boring bits out, and by the power of our words we make battles become heroic feats, matters of only a few hours where enemies meet and fates are decided. We will then not tell of the boredom that Lizzie felt, of all the long hours she spent in the room of the boy she was tending to, idly cross-stitching an apron, asking herself if that endless wait, that resolute oozing of days a drop at a time was all that she was destined to. We will not dwell on her doubts, but instead jump immediately to the morning when she woke up to go tending on Richard (for the boy she was tending to was called Richard) and found violets on the floor next to her bed._

_Firstly, she thought it a mere coincidence. The violets must have been placed in her room by a maid, and then forgotten, and then inadvertently made to fall. Although no maid had entered the room since the previous night, and although the violets smelt fresh, and although they looked almost as if they had sprouted from the floor, and they gave the same sort of resistance when she tried to pluck them, she strove to give the matter no mind and went instead back to her business, which she considered far more pressing._

_The next day, when she woke up, she found the violets again. This time it was harder to give it no mind, but she strived all the same, and went about her business all the same, even when she saw, from the corner of her eye, a patch of the smallest bluest forget-me-nots she had ever seen right under the desk in Richard’s room._

_The next few days went on much in the same way, with flowers blooming where they should not bloom and Lizzie trying not to think of them, and to think instead of the boy who was dying (there was now no doubt that he was dying) in his small dark room._

_When the boy at long last died, and when the veil of magic that had hovered over Starecross was lifted and the story of this magic told to her, who, for her part, felt extraneous to it as if she had not been there at all, shut as she had been in Richard’s room- the story being that a faerie, of all things, had been the thing killing student after student, not an illness, and that Lizzie had missed the battle, had only heard, not seen (although she had been in the same house) the turmoil of bravery of the headmaster, the strange death of her patient whom she had let escape, dozing off when she had not even been sleepy- when the story of Richard and Starecross and the dangerous faerie had finished being told, and thus finished to happen, and when Lizzie had left the school to its mourning of the dead and returned to her own small room in her mother’s house, it quickly became impossible for her to give the flowers no mind. It seemed now that they just sprouted wherever she was, whatever she was doing, not now merely the simple English-garden varieties that she had become used to, bouquets of unseasonal roses and regiments of tall sunflowers, but also, now, beautiful and dangerous-looking exotic flowers of which she did not know the name, that she found perched on her dresser like colourful birds in the morning, or once, at supper, inside her teacup._

_Now, Lizzie Elmington was a nurse and a serious woman, and flowers were certainly beautiful, but she felt, in her heart of hearts, that going about her life bathed in fragrant petals was a bit at odds with her matter-of-fact nature, with her sturdy frame and her steady heart; was something that would befit more a dainty small princess of a far-away land. Not to mention that Lizzie Elmington had the habit, on a Sunday, of slipping out of church unnoticed, when the weather was good and the sermon too long, and even this she could not do anymore now, for the flowers coiling around her ankles even on the coarse paving stones of the church immediately alerted people to her location. She found her position, all in all, not to be the most desirable._

_And so it was that, overcoming the fear that despite herself she had started to feel towards Starecross- almost an awe, which was however tinged with grief for her young warden, she made her way to the school, to confer with the headmaster, and ask him to please lift the spell of which she had unmistakeably been victim. And she met the headmaster in the warm, comfortable library of his school, and thought to herself how strange it was that she should have felt fear at all, for she now was at home in the school, easy, buried as she was in a green velvet armchair with the heads of foxgloves gently brushing her fingers. And she told the headmaster how she thought that she had been the victim of a spell, and the words came easy to her, and the kind smile of the headmaster warmed her soul, even when he said: “I am afraid I cannot help you.”_

_“And how is that? Certainly a man of your magical prowess…”_

_“I did not make myself clear, Miss Elmington, and I am sorry. I cannot lift your spell not because I am not able to- although I am not able to at present, I am sure there must be a counter spell that can be found, if I apply myself to it… But I do not- what I want to say is, I do not_ want _to: forgive me, Miss Elmington.”_

_“I have to confess my confusion, Mr Segundus. Sir. This is certainly a hex, that your students must have cast upon me in jest. How could you not rid me of it?”_

_“But think, Miss Elmington. All of my students were incapacitated at the time of the first manifestations of your curse, as you call it. They were either away, or sick with throat-fever, or sick with worry for their classmates. And even you, who do not know them well, must admit that they are not so fickle as to jest while the lives of their friends are at risk.”_

_“I would not say-”_

_“If I may interrupt you, I think that I might have come to a conclusion regarding the happenings of the past month.”_

_“Pray go on.”_

_“I believe, and this is very presumptuous of me, but- I believe that John Uskglass, our king, might have visited us.”_

_“Surely you do not mean Richard!”_

_“I believe- yes, miss Elmington.”_

_“The natural consequence of this is then that my curse-”_

_“Is but a blessing of the king, I daresay, for your excellent care.”_

_“I am- I do not know what to say!”_

_“We are very lucky, miss Elmington; very lucky.”_

_“I have no doubt that the school is! But this is very inconvenient for me.”_

_“I think perhaps that our king has lived very long among faeries, and that perhaps he has acquired their taste for the beautiful. I am afraid he cares not for what is convenient.”_

_“So what am I to do now?”_

_Mr Segundus said nothing, but shook his head in that sweet way of his, although in his eyes Lizzie Elmington saw something different, a pride for his school and his magic that was almost, in a way, fanatic, although Mr Segundus was a very meek sort of fanatic. Of course he would not help me, she thought: he is like faeries too, in a way; he does not care about inconveniences, only about magic. And so she excused herself out of the room, and out of the school, and she deliberated that she should take matters into her own hands, which she did._

_The next day she went over to Mark Weatherstaff, who had made a business out of selling flowers, and she struck out a deal with him; the deal being that from that moment on she should not be a nurse anymore, but she should work with him, if he wanted her, and be his partner. And he could pick up the flowers that grew around her at will, and sell them, and she should have a part of the profits. Mark Weatherstaff eagerly consented, and just like this Lizzie Elmington found a trade for herself again: making the most out of the King’s gift she became well-respected as a trader, and bought fancy millinery for herself and her sisters and a trip to London for her brother. She and Mark Weatherstaff became inseparable partners in business, and it did not take long for them to become partners of another kind, for Lizzie Elmington, though not very beautiful, was smart and knew many stories, which appealed to Mark Weatherstaff, who in turn was very tall and very good-tempered, which appealed to Lizzie. And in time they got married, and they built for themselves a house which they made full of children and flowers, and they were reasonably happy for many years to come, although they were often bored._

_And so we shall not dwell on that part of the story, and end instead Lizzie Elmington’s story like this, with her wedding, where ends meet and adventure tucks itself safely back in routine after the chaos and the magic, which the Raven King weaves incessantly all around us, forever and ever, until the end of England._


End file.
